The effective oxygen pressure of liquid binary alloys.

In previous works a theoretical analysis was developed for the interactions of a pure liquid metal and an oxidizing atmosphere in both an inert gas carrier and a vacuum. In particular, the effects of oxidation reactions taking place in the gas phase and the evaporation of the condensed oxides were considered. In both cases the presence of oxidation phenomena contributed to maintaining interface cleanness and then strongly affected the shape of the boundary separating the oxidation and de-oxidation regimes. In this work we present a more general physico-mathematical analysis, which is extended to liquid binary alloys and their oxides. The theoretical results obtained indicate that the behaviour of the alloy towards oxygen tends to be similar to that of the less oxidizable component: so the existence of a volatile oxide can often prevent surface oxidation even if the corresponding metal is present in low percentages.